Smart Beginnings Greater Richmond awards impact early childhood development

courtesy of Lea Setegn on behalf of the United Way

Petersburg, Colonial Heights and Chesterfield County will receive almost $20,000 in grant funding this month for year-long projects that will enhance their work to ensure that young children have the skills and experiences they need to succeed in school when they start kindergarten.

The School Readiness Planning Grants were awarded by Smart Beginnings Greater Richmond, a regional coalition of local public and private organizations, businesses, and citizens working together to ensure that the region’s children enter school healthy, well-cared for, and ready to succeed in school and in life. The coalition is facilitated by United Way of Greater Richmond & Petersburg and the Greater Richmond Chamber.

Petersburg, Colonial Heights and Chesterfield County are three of the six localities that were awarded a total of almost $40,000 from Smart Beginnings Greater Richmond. These grant awards, and the projects that they fund, will fuel an integral component of the five-year action plan that is part of the Regional Plan for Children’s School Readiness. Published in May 2010 by Smart Beginnings Greater Richmond, the Regional Plan represents the community’s consensus on what it will take to achieve school readiness for all of the region’s young children. It also serves as a roadmap, providing a tool for strategic planning, coordinating efforts, achieving economies of scale and measuring progress toward the plan’s goals.

“The School Readiness Planning Grants will assist the localities in forming public-private partnerships that will ultimately benefit the children who live there,” said Tom Chewning, Chair of Smart Beginnings Greater Richmond. “We are especially pleased to fund two applications where two localities will be working cooperatively together.”

All of the grant applications submitted to Smart Beginnings Greater Richmond received full funding, which will be disbursed in September. Localities were encouraged to submit multi-jurisdictional collaborative proposals, and four chose to do so. Grants awards were approved for:

•Ashland and Hanover County (joint project): $10,000.
•Chesterfield County and Colonial Heights (joint project): $9,753.
•Petersburg: $9,725.
•Richmond: $10,000.

The School Readiness Planning Grants will assist these six localities with implementing the Regional Plan for Children’s School Readiness at the local level. The plan sets regional goals to strengthen the preparation children are receiving before they enter school. To implement the plan, each locality must identify, assess and address the needs that are specific to their jurisdictions.

“What the localities discover through their grant-funded work will ultimately inform the work we do at the regional level,” said Barbara Couto Sipe, Director of Smart Beginnings Greater Richmond and Vice President of Community Impact for United Way. “Smart Beginnings will provide grant recipients with support and technical assistance, and in June 2011, the localities will report their findings to us for inclusion in the regional plan.”

The grant opportunity was announced in May, at a dinner meeting of 120 elected officials and education leaders from throughout the Richmond region. The event was co-sponsored by Smart Beginnings Greater Richmond and the Capital Region Collaborative, a cooperative effort between the Richmond Regional Planning District Commission and the Greater Richmond Chamber to engage government, community and business stakeholders in enhancing the quality of life in the Richmond region. Smart Beginnings formed a partnership with the Collaborative to increase regional cooperation in addressing needs for early childhood development.

“The Capital Region Collaborative has identified early childhood development as an issue that is critical to the health and vitality of the Richmond region,” said Robert Crum, Executive Director of the Richmond Regional Planning District Commission. “The meeting in May was an incredible demonstration of the Richmond region’s commitment to this issue, and we are extremely pleased that Smart Beginnings is funding these local efforts to move forward with school readiness efforts.”

In 2009, there were 1,750 children in the Richmond region – 14% of the region’s incoming kindergartners – who started school without the language and literacy skills they needed to be successful. These children did not pass the PALS-K test, a key indicator that measures whether kindergarteners are starting school with the basic literacy skills they need.

“Research shows that children who start school behind tend to stay behind, and the gap only widens over time,” said Couto Sipe. “This affects not only the child’s school performance, but also affects the entire region and the future of the workforce. A lack of school readiness contributes to tremendous costs in special education, delinquency, teen pregnancy, substance abuse, and lost workforce potential.”